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Fixed [4474] Black screen after visiting neighbours

DeletedUser607

Guest
sorry, but no that wasn't the same issue.

I did not get a black screen, just that particular firefox-window froze and did not respont at all.

the other firefox windows (I have 3, as I'm using multifox, which is a very clever plugin) were stuck aswell.

after killing the flashplayer-process in the taskmanager, that firefox-window was unstuck, and I could reload elvenar.
 

DeletedUser594

Guest
This seem to be a hard nut to crack as it's been some time!
Something wrong with the last "Update" again!!:D
 

Elderflower

Well-Known Member
I'm not getting a black screen but the game runs slower and slower and Flash takes up more and more memory until everything freezes. This only happens if I start aiding players. I am using FireFox, and logging out of the game and back in again sorts it out okay. In fact I generally do not wait for it all to freeze but log out when Flash memory usage gets to about 2 million.
However the task of providing neighbourly help has become a distinct chore. It takes so long when you have a lot of players to help and I am afraid some days I just don't have the time.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
I have had several times a black screen when visiting a neighbour and that looks very weird. It happened yesterday evening. I had visited several neighbours already to help them and it went well, although it was very slow and I had problems with the map loading (partly loading and very slowly). And then all of a sudden, I got the black screen. The whole city of the neighbour was gone, it was all black. Returning home didn't help. I logged off and in again, didn't help either. Then restarted my computer, that helped. Just for a few, after visiting some neighbours I got the same black background again. I was wondering if I should update flash player or something, just didn't have time today to check it.

Today, I had an occurence of the same bug that the thread creator had. I also helped ~30 neighbors successfully, but when I visited the last player, their city was black whereas the menus showed correctly and still worked. The game did not slow down. I could leave their city since my own city and the world map worked correctly. Any other neighbor I visited had a black city from now on, restarting Elvenar did not help but restarting Windows did.
Another thing I found out: When you visit a neighbor with a black city, you can still toggle fullscreen on/off (bottom right of the display). If you do so, their city is no longer black and the background image is displayed, but with no buildings. So you have an invisible city in a beautiful green landscape instead of a black screen with menus.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
The black screen issue happened to me today again. I started Windows' Task Manager and found out that FlashPlayer claimed nearly 3,1 GB of my RAM (most of my 4GB), so it's indeed a memory leak. Restarting firefox is enough 'though, you don't need to restart the entire system.

Each time you visit a neighbor, FlashPlayerPlugin claims additional ~100 MB of RAM. If you visit any other player 30-40 times (even if it is the same player all the time), you'll reproduce the black screen issue.
 
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DeletedUser

Guest
Yes unfortunately :(
It's getting very tedious to visit my neighbours now, I certainly hope they manage to fix this problem soon! I'd say highest priority ^^
 

DeletedUser503

Guest
It is getting more and more of a pain to visit cities. Black screens and occasionally,
a neighbor is invisible, that I know is still there. I refresh and go back to the world map
and there he is, right where he was supposed to be but was a blank tan landscape as
if there was nothing there the first time the map loaded. Pe0ple are running out of patience as the game causes
more frustration than enjoyment. :(
 

DeletedUser594

Guest
Even so we are told the devs are aware of the blackouts, they're sure taking a long
time to fix it! However it doesn't really matter that much as when it happens I just
play another game! Started to setup my spare computer with Linux/ Opera and see
how the game behaves there... seems like not all is Innos fault, as Firefox and Flashplayer
are at war! Get a lot of shortcut errors lately! Maybe that could be the reason behind
those blackouts!!??....
 
The black screens are caused by a memory leak. With the update to 0.20 tomorrow, we have made some improvements to the game's performance, which should hopefully make it a bit better (it won't fix it 100% yet, unfortunately).
 

DeletedUser778

Guest
The black screens are caused by a memory leak. With the update to 0.20 tomorrow, we have made some improvements to the game's performance, which should hopefully make it a bit better (it won't fix it 100% yet, unfortunately).
Hmm I have the feeling I got blackscreens/crashes now even more often/faster then before the patch.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
Yes, I just wanted to write the same. The crashes seem to happen more often than before. Especially as fellowship leader (archmages) or as an ambassador/mage you need to visit the players to before you can click on the "invite" button. I had three crashes today without having done my daily visits to my direct neighbros yet.

But it's also possible that the neighbors I visited had bigger cities than my direct neighbors - and bigger cities (probably) require more RAM, don't they?
 

DeletedUser

Guest
I think I understand the dilemma. There is a memory leak bug so hard to find that even a team of software coders - even if they're professional - can't find it for a long time (because every line of the source code looks right), and at the same time they lose time they would like to invest to add more exciting, new features to the game. :(
 
Please try turning off animations - this could help preventing this issue a bit and/or make it appear less. Please let us know what your findings are when you try turning off the game animations. :)
 

DeletedUser778

Guest
I don't think the animations matter much. I have them turned off most of the time and it still happens often to me.
 

DeletedUser734

Guest
With me it also happens more often since the patch has been loaded. Today I was only able to polish 2 neighbours, before the patch I was at least able to polish up to 10 players before the black screen occured
:-(
 

DeletedUser

Guest
By the way: For me (still using Firefox, see above) it is not a black screen anymore. The plugin now crashes with an exclamation mark and a circle around it. The background is white. But it's still due to a memory leak.
 
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